This year, OPEN, the International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, will reach its twentieth edition. A significant year that celebrates the twentieth anniversary of an idea, a winning, innovative and regenerating intuition on the scene of contemporary art events. Twenty years of sculptures, installations, happenings and performances bearing witness to how art can break into the outside environment to attract the onlooker.

Conceived and curated by Paolo De Grandis, co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa, the exhibition is organised by PDG Arte Communications with the patronage of the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities and Tourism, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and by the Veneto Region.

OPEN retraces its history through some of the most significant names in contemporary art who have taken part in OPEN such as Yoko Ono, who will present the world première of INVISIBLE PEOPLE, a project that has required long preparation: a symbolic and metaphoric vision of the journey of migrants, between imagination and poetry, so as not to forget. The return to the Hotel Excelsior and the return of ORLAN with a site specific installation based on LePlan du Film, an important series conceived in 2001 in search of what Jean-Luc Godard called “the reverse of the cinema”: a work on the creation of a film in reverse starting from the communication and advertising of a cinematographic work, unique aspects, in this ingenious fiction, that make the film real.

And again Igor Mitoraj, Luigi Ontani, Federica Marangoni, Marco Nereo Rotelli, Gianfranco Meggiato, Amin Gulgee, Ferruccio Gard and Marianne Heske, who at OPEN 1999, brought an enormous 4000-year-old stone from the village of Tafjord, which is still at Venice Lido today.

A stage, a point of arrival and of a new departure, more aware and more rigorous, but always in line with the curator philosophy of its creator, Paolo De Grandis. Unlike every other yearly event, from which one could always expect something new, OPEN proposes its linearity and its integration, characteristics that have matured thanks to the simplicity of the underlying idea and to the open-air exhibition space: territories to be explored, points for exchange and comparison, choreographic spaces often open to be transformed, places where, in both physical and mental terms, the visitor can interact with the contents of the works on display.

OPEN is a great public park, a weave of nature and culture, internal and external, biological and technological, painting and multimedia, a synthesis of characters and of contemporary trends. In this way, the territory becomes a privileged observatory, as is demonstrated by the organisation of this important event, projected in a national and international dimension.

The curators collaborating with OPEN this year include Jon Hendricks for the participation of Yoko Ono, Philippe Daverio for Giuseppe Verri, as well as Niilofur Farrukh, Tamara Li, Nevia Capello, Serena Mormino, Bianca Laura Petretto, Elga Wimmer, Umberto Zampini and Flavia Vago.

The inauguration will present a performance by the young artist Reverie who, with PourOntani, will make a dedication with open eyes to Maestro Luigi Ontani that does not envisage any kind of quotation/recitation, artifice or expedient. It is a question of necessity and of life: tableaux-vivants, works made from life and especially the living echo of “VivArte”. In parallel RichardHumann will present Ascension, which on the occasion of OPEN 20 will create new constellation systems superimposed over our existing ones in the night sky. Humann’s art installation harnesses technology: the viewers simply hold their smart phone or tablet up toward the sky to see the Augmented Reality art.

The eighth edition of the Arte Laguna Special Prize will be assigned to a young artist selected by the Arte Laguna Prize jury. This award will offer the winner the possibility to be included among the finalists of the Arte Laguna Prize 2018 and to show his or her work on the circuit organised by the same association.

With the strength of this extraordinary formula, OPEN contributes to modifying the fabric of a city, making it an international platform of works in the open air, to show an amazed audience a new, involuntary, amazing way of enjoying art in the light dynamic of a walk outside over-familiar and restricting walls and perimeters, changing its content before their eyes.

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